Wednesday, October 31, 2018

On October 30 Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced
that he would introduce legislation to challenge birthright citizenship for the
U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. “[I]t has become a magnet for
illegal immigration in modern times,” the senator claimed. Many immigration opponents have asserted this, but they’re rarely challenged to provide proof.

We take a look at the available evidence in The Politics
of Immigration: Questions and Answers, second edition, Chapter 4, “Why
Can’t They Just ‘Get Legal’?”:

Children born in the United States are U.S. citizens, even
if their parents are out-of-status immigrants. Opponents of immigration like to
call such children “anchor babies,” implying that immigrant parents use their
U.S.-born children as a way to establish themselves here. In July 2010 Senator
Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed on Fox News that unauthorized women come to the
United States simply to “drop and leave” their babies.

Most citizen children of undocumented immigrants are
actually born some time after their parents have settled in the United States,
according to a study of babies born to immigrants from March 2009 to March
2010. Just 9 percent of the out-of-status parents had arrived in 2008 or later;
most had been in the United States for a number of years when the babies were
born—30 percent had arrived between 2004 and 2007, and 61 percent arrived
before 2004. For its October 2005 survey, Bendixen & Associates asked
undocumented immigrants to give their reasons for migrating to the United
States. The respondents overwhelmingly cited work opportunities; having “anchor
babies” didn’t even rate a mention.

In any case, having a U.S. citizen child doesn’t help
undocumented immigrants gain legal status, or even protect them from
deportation. U.S. citizens have to be at least twenty-one years old to sponsor
their parents for legal residency. Each year, thousands of people who have
U.S.-born children are deported, leaving families shattered. A 2012 study by
the New York University School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic found that 87
percent of New York City immigration cases involving parents of U.S. citizen
children between 2005 and 2010 ended in deportation….

If we
ended birthright citizenship, what status would the U.S.-born children of
undocumented immigrants have? Would they also
be undocumented? In that case, ending birthright citizenship would increase the
number of undocumented people in the country; the undocumented population would
be at least 44 percent larger by 2050, according to a projection by the
nonprofit Migration Policy Institute project.In other words, revoking
the country’s long tradition of granting citizenship to everyone born here
would expand and make permanent an underclass of vulnerable, easily exploited
people without full rights—very much like the U.S. South under Jim Crow laws or
South Africa under apartheid.

[We’re occasionally posting excerpts from the second edition
ofThe Politics
of Immigration: Questions and Answers. You can orderhereor
from your favorite bookseller.]

Friday, October 26, 2018

Two of the immigrant rights movement’s
historic demands provide a basis for actually closing the agency, and beyond
that for building a movement to demand more fundamental changes.

By David L. Wilson, MR Online

October 25, 2018

Over the past few months immigrant rights activism has come to be defined
largely by a demand to “abolish ICE.” The drive to close down Immigration and
Customs Enforcement—a Department of Homeland Security agency responsible for
internal enforcement of immigration laws—has figured in headlines, garnered
support from activists and a few Democratic politicians, and provoked furious
denunciations from conservatives. But despite the attention there seems to be
little agreement on what’s meant by the phrase, or on how to turn it into a
reality.[...]

Sunday, October 21, 2018

This is an excerpt from the Families
For Freedom newsletter for September, treating the important issue of
activist approaches to local ICE detention contracts. To subscribe, email info@familiesforfreedom.org; you
can contribute to FFF here.)—TPOI
editor.

In early September, Hudson County announced
their intent to phase out their detention contract with ICE by 2020. The news
came after concerted efforts by local faith-based and advocacy groups to end
the contract, and a
lawsuit filed by the ACLU that targeted the Freeholders' shady actions in
trying to get the contract renewed without community input.

The potential cancellation of ICE's contract in Hudson represents political
strength: it would not be possible without growing support in our movement
against immigration detention, if ICE's name did not now correctly represent
malice and evil to the general public. Yet at the same time, it counteracts
another win that also represented political strength, the establishment of the
New York Immigrant Family Unity Project. On the one hand, the win of access to
indispensable legal representation; on the other, the win of building political
power among allies outside.

Critics of the phase-out are concerned that people detained in Hudson will
be moved to remote detention centers, far from their families and attorneys.
NYIFUP lawyers have
come out in strong opposition to the planned phase-out on these
grounds. In support of their position stand previous incidents, like when trans
women incarcerated by ICE in Santa Ana City Jail, close to a dense network of
support and services groups, were
moved far away to a remote facility in rural New Mexico. Supporters of
the Hudson contract ending—and of the growing number of other similar successes
around the country—are behind it because of the political momentum it both
creates and represents.

Beyond these two positions, there is also the question of efficacy. One of
the organizations involved in the campaign against the Hudson contract stated
that in order to abolish ICE "we must destroy ICE's capacity to
incarcerate people." The statement is noble but the problem with it lies
in the fact that this political win does not affect ICE's ability to
incarcerate people. Anything that we can do to hinder ICE—to make 'em bleed—is
absolutely worth doing, but we must understand that contracts with local jails
and private prison companies come and go, whether in scandal or in silence.

Back in 2009-10, after people detained in Varick Street in Manhattan went
on hunger strikes to draw attention to horrific conditions there, the jail
stopped incarcerating people, many of whom would not be jailed in Hudson. But
this decision was made by ICE, and its purpose was to get away from local
scrutiny. More recently, in the wake of an 18-month-old baby being killed by
her contact
with the detention and deportation system, the City of Eloy pulled
their contract with ICE for a family detention in South Texas. This too
was a decision supported by ICE, and the contract has now been redrawn, this
time with the city of Dilley, TX.

Across the country, more counties and cities are folding detention
contracts with ICE, both under public pressure and without it. But as long as ending
such contracts doesn't get people free, we have to ask ourselves what value
these closures have. In contrast to ending contracts that promote information
sharing between local law enforcement and ICE, or legislation barring ICE from
certain areas, cancelling detention contracts more than likely just means
relocating jails. Abolition doesn't mean the transporting of incarcerated
people from county to county, nor the opportunity for new profit to be spun
from immiseration; it means no more people locked up. What value do these
campaigns have if the results resemble ICE's own past actions, and fail to
promote political power among those incarcerated in these facilities?

To that point, it is noteworthy that in the debate that has unfolded about
whether this closure is of value, the voices of the directly affected have been
relatively absent.

Lawyers in movement are often correctly criticized for failing to see the
forest for the trees, for working timidly within what's presently possible
instead of pushing the boundaries of what is possible. But the concerns and
criticisms raised by the lawyers here need not lead to a purely reformist
attitude, focused only on procedural justice instead of actual justice. The
concerns invite us who believe in abolishing ICE and the entire prison
industrial complex to continue asking the question: how can we be effective?
How do we ensure our fights are changing the conditions people suffer under,
and not providing an outlet for the moral outrage of spectators? How do we fight
to win?

Please join us for an important and timely exploration into
our immigration laws and how they have been applied over the years, the role
immigration has played in our country, and the reality of immigration today.

Bring your
questions and thoughts about immigration to this participatory workshop
facilitated by Jane Guskin and David Wilson, authors of The Politics of
Immigration: Questions and Answers.
Together we will strengthen our skills to engage more effectively in
productive dialogue when people ask questions such as:

·Why do so many people come here “illegally”? Why don't
they just wait in line?

·If someone committed a crime in this country, why
shouldn't they be deported?

Saturday, October 13, 2018

Please join us for an important and timely exploration into
our immigration laws and how they have been applied over the years, the role
immigration has played in our country, and the reality of immigration today.

Getting at the Roots - Jane Guskin and David Wilson,
authors of The Politics of Immigration, will discuss immigration today,
including the global, political, and economic forces that shape migration; the
racial and political implications of U.S. immigration law, policy, and
practice; and related issues.

Thursday, November 15, 2018, 6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

The Money Question - Jane Guskin and David Wilson
continue the immigration discussion with an examination of the relationship of
immigrants to jobs and the economy.

Wednesday, October 10, 2018

Why are people in
other countries leaving their homes and coming here? What does it mean to be “illegal”?
How do immigration raids, prisons, and border walls impact communities? Who
suff­ers and who profits from our current system – and what would happen if we
transformed it?

Saturday, October 6, 2018

In a September
30 article, the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff (@NickMiroff)covers
a visit to Central America by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) head
Kevin McAleenan. Miroff reports that border apprehensions of migrant families
along the southwest border increased by 38 percent in August over the month
before; he also notes that the number of Guatemalan families apprehended in
fiscal 2018 is nearly double the number from the previous fiscal year.

Miroff is an excellent reporter who has broken a number of
stories, notably on the child
separation policy. But in common with most of the corporate media, his reporting
often lacks context.

“Trump erupted earlier this year when border arrests
skyrocketed,” he writes. It’s true that there was a major increase in asylum seeker
arrests, but terms like “skyrocketed” reinforce the impression that alien
hordes are pouring across the border. The rise in these arrests actually turns
out to be a blip if we view it historically. Even with the new arrests, border
apprehensions remain—and have remained for a decade—at their lowest
level since before the majority of the current U.S. population was born.

The article also discusses push factors in Central America’s
Northern Triangle, and warns that “[n]ew instability and political polarization
in Guatemala could make things worse in the coming year” because of actions by
corruption-prone President Jimmy Morales. “American officials have been
hesitant to criticize Morales,” Miroff writes. He doesn’t mention that
“American officials” have in fact backed every corrupt regime in Guatemala at least
since a CIA-backed coup in 1954.

The biggest push factor in Guatemala appears to be poverty
and malnutrition in the western highlands, a “crisis…exacerbated by consecutive
years of drought and meager harvests.” There’s no mention of the serious
possibility that global
warming is behind the drought in Guatemala. Ironically, just two days
earlier the Washington Postnoted
that the Trump administration has now admitted that, in the words of scientist
Michael MacCracken, “human activities are going to lead to [a] rise of carbon
dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re
saying they’re not going to do anything about it.”

All this context could have been added in a few words, with
links. Its absence will lead less informed readers to assume that the flight of Central Americans from their own countries is “not our problem.”

Wednesday, October 3, 2018

On September 30 Esquire posted a fascinating
article by reporter Ryan Lizza about the Iowa farm

operated by the family
of California Congress member Devin Nunes, a major Trump supporter. The family
quietly moved most of its California dairy operations to this farm, located in
the small town of Sibley, more than a decade ago. Lizza wondered why they had
been so careful to avoid publicity about the move, so he went to Sibley to
investigate.

His investigation quickly turned into something out of the
old hardboiled detective genre, with sources suddenly clamming up and
mysterious vehicles tailing Lizza as he drove around town. Eventually the
mystery was solved: dairy farmers and others in the area seemed to be heavily
dependent on undocumented labor to carry out their operations. Lizza was unable
to establish anything about the Nunes family’s farm, but the presumption is
that they too relied on unauthorized workers.

Rep. Nunes himself appears to be a moderate on immigration
issues, but he’s been an important enabler of the Trump regime, which is
committed to a ferocious anti-immigrant agenda. Sibley farmers seem to maintain a
similar duality: they disagree with Trump and their Congress member, white
supremacist Steve King, about immigration policy, yet they vote overwhelmingly
for these men. “There is massive political hypocrisy at the center of this:
Trump’s and King’s rural-farm supporters embrace anti-immigrant politicians
while employing undocumented immigrants,” Lizza writes.

Lizza’s reporting is great, but his analysis isn’t
especially deep. He notes that Iowa’s dairy farmers use undocumented labor to
save money—“workers start at fourteen or fifteen dollars an hour, the first
farmer said. If dairies had to use legal labor, they would likely have to raise
that to eighteen or twenty dollars”—but he doesn’t explore how “illegality”
forces these workers to accept
lower wages. And he fails to ask who ultimately benefits from the
exploitation of undocumented farm workers.

Following the Money

It’s actually not the farmers, Lizza notes: “many dairies wouldn’t survive” if they had to pay authorized workers. In other words, the farmers
underpay their workforce because they are being squeezed by the large food
processing and distribution corporations, which pocket the extra profits. So an
obvious question would be whether these corporations or their CEOs make
contributions to anti-immigrant politicians like Trump and King. Unfortunately,
Lizza doesn’t raise this.

He also seems uninformed about guest worker programs. As
Iowa’s farmers see it, the best option is bringing in H-2A workers; farmers
can exploit these laborers just as easily as the current undocumented force but
without the risk of fines or jail sentences for violating immigration law.
However, dairy farming requires year-round employees, while the current H-2A programs only allow seasonal hiring. The farmers want to remove
this limitation.

Lizza dismisses the idea as “a fantasy in the current
environment; Trump, King, and their allies describe such policies as
‘amnesty.’” Apparently Lizza hasn’t been paying attention. It’s true that King
opposes the H-2A expansion, but Trump’s
all for it. “Guest workers, don’t we agree?” he ranted at an April rally.
“We have to have them.”

About The Politics of Immigration

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers is a book that goes beyond soundbites to tackle concerns about immigration in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. For immigrants and supporters, the book is a useful tool to confront stereotypes and disinformation. For those who are undecided about immigration, it lays out the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion. Ideal for classroom use, the updated and expanded 2017 edition provides a succinct overview of U.S. immigration history, policy, and practice, with detailed notes guiding readers toward further exploration.
Guskin and Wilson have written extensively on immigration and facilitated dozens of dialogues on the topic with students, community activists, congregations, and other public audiences. To arrange a dialogue or for more information, contact them at thepoliticsofimmigration@gmail.com.
To stay in the loop on author events and related resources, follow the book on Twitter (@Immigration_QA) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ImmigrationQA/).